Kirkland makes donation to Lac Mégantic

By Matthew Guité
www.thesuburban.com

Kirkland’s city council passed a motion at their monthly council meeting Monday night to make a donation to the town of Lac Mégantic following the devastating train derailment and subsequent fire that killed dozens and destroyed several buildings that the town now needs to replace.

The $20,000 donation was passed unanimously, along with a message of support from the town, and will be used to help rebuild the town’s library, which was destroyed along with all of the town’s records in the July 6 train derailment.

Later on in the evening, the council passed two motions lending their support and voicing concern on issues of transportation safety.

The first called for a revision and review of the safety measures in place for railway transport in light of the Lac Mégantic disaster. The second was an expression of concern about liquid radioactive waste being transported from Ontario to South

Carolina via public roads and bridges, and a call for the waste to be solidified to avoid any potential danger in the case of an accident.

Kirkland’s director general Joe Sanalitro told The Suburban that even though the issues were not of immediate concern to Kirkland, they were still issues that the council felt important enough to comment on.

“It’s a support of municipalities that have those railways running through their area. There are situations where they support us and we support them in order to come together to speak to higher levels of government,” he said.

The other major item on the night’s agenda was the passing of a new by-law relating to parks and public places. The by-law, which includes such information as how late a park is considered open, what is or is not allowed in a park, and fines for rule violations, was actually a consolidation of existing by-laws and amendments that had built up over the years.

“What happens is over the year you amend bylaws, and eventually you have five, six, seven amendments and if someone asks for information on that by-law you have to give them all those amendments, so we simply consolidated them,” Sanalitro told The Suburban.

As well as the announcement of bidders on projects such as repairing bike paths and road works, a call for tender to replace and add to the city’s air-conditioning network was turned down following a bid that was far higher than the city had expected or budgeted for.

“There was only one bidder, and the bid was about $150,000 higher than we had estimated it to be, so we went back to tender,” Sanalitro said.